Prodigal Son

‘savvy and often moving’

‘A keen, passionate portrait of the author as a poetry-spouting romantic punk torn between literary dreams and his roots in the Bronx… Prodigal Son is pure, splendid Shanley: shaggily idealistic and always scratching a philosophical itch underneath jokes and banter.’

‘Shanley chooses characters stretched to the breaking point between rage and love… His are characters of obsessive passions who match those passions with hyper-melodic language.’

John Patrick Shanley is from the Bronx. His plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, the dreamer examines his pillow, Four Dogs and a Bone, Beggars in the House of Plenty and Dirty Story. His trilogy Church and State began with Doubt, and continued with Defiance and Storefront Church. For his play Doubt, Mr. Shanley received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the arena of film, he has nine films to his credit, most recently Doubt with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. Doubt, which he also directed, was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay. Other films include Five Corners (Special Jury Prize, Barcelona Film Festival), Alive, Joe Versus The Volcano (which he also directed) and “Live From Baghdad” for HBO (Emmy nomination). For his script of Moonstruck, he received both the Writers Guild Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The Writers Guild of America awarded Mr. Shanley the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing.